Monster

Chapter 2: Horror

It was a horrifying sight. There were two gigantic wolves sitting in the middle of the clearing. One was clearly the black beast that had been terrifying backpackers for the past year. It was easily well over 11 feet tall standing on its hind legs and it was built like a horse, with claws the size of a human head. The other was smaller and thinner, with light gray fur and black spots on its back. The light gray wolf looked directly at me and I recognized the expression in its black eyes.

“Embry.”

The wolf nodded. I looked at them both and suddenly, I felt my eyes tearing up.

So this is what I am. A monster.

But instead of the tears that I expected to come, I felt a strange itching in my eye. Wolves can’t cry I realized. And the realization only just made me want to cry more.

Sam turned away from me suddenly and let out a loud howl. I jumped at the noise, startled to hear it up close. Two more wolves came dashing out of the forest. Clearly they had been waiting in the edges for the call. One was huge, almost as large as Sam, with dark brown fur, and the other was a deep gray.

“The La Push Gang,” I realized.

“Not so much a gang. More of a pack,” Jared joked.

He and Paul chuckled as they high-fived each other. The sight of the two gigantic wolves leaping up to slap each others' paws was a terrifyingly awesome sight, and I started to back away before I remembered that I was one of them now.

“Holy sh*t. Can we all hear each other’s thoughts?” I asked, suddenly processing the addition of the two new voices in my head.

I looked at him confused, but I tried to quiet my thoughts to figure out what he meant. And that's when I heard the faint humming in the background that I hadn't noticed at first. As I strained to listen in on the humming, I slowly began to distinguish actual voices. Or really, not voices, but the blurred internal thoughts of all the others that were in the clearing with me.

"Damnit, I can't believe he's a bigger wolf than I am. He's almost as big as Sam ..."

"Don't know why the kid is freaking out. This is best thing that's happened to me ..."

"I'm sorry, man. I wanted to tell you but I couldn't ..."

My head snapped up at that last sentence. I looked at Embry and we stared at each other for a long time as I read the apology in his face.

I turned to Sam who was looking at me expectantly, "I don't understand. How? Why?"

"It'll be easier if I just show you," he responded.

I got up onto my hind legs, expecting him to lead me somewhere when suddenly, I felt as if I had fallen headlong into a movie theater with scenes flashing before me. Except it was a 3-D theater and I was somehow standing in the middle of each scene, an invisible observer, just watching as the stories unfolded around me. I realized that I was in Sam's head, the way I was in Embry's head before, and Sam was showing me memories. Flashbacks of the past.

I saw his own transformation two summers ago, triggered by a fight with Leah. He runs out of the Clearwater's house, feeling like he’s about to die. He’s able to get into the woods and out of sight when the transformation happens. I see and hear the sheer panic and terror in his thoughts. He has no idea what has happened to him and thinks that he had lost his mind.

The forest blurs past as I watch him run frantically through the woods, desperately searching for answers or clues or anything to help explain what had happened to him. Then I see him looking into a river and seeing his reflection for the first time – the realization dawning in his eyes.

I saw Sam as a man again, shaking hands with Old Quil, who nearly jumps out of his seat when he touches Sam's burning hot skin. The scene shifts again and I see Sam with Billy, Old Quil, and Harry, who are urgently explaining to him what has happened. I couldn’t help but stare at my father, who was doing much of the explaining, horrified that he's known all along what would one day happen to me. The low tones of their conversation wash over me and I am only able to register parts of it, "...the legends are true ... happened to our grandfathers ... werewolves ... vampires..."

I jerked myself suddenly out of Sam's head in sheer horror.

"Vampires?! That can't be real ...”

"All the legends are real, Jacob."

I was back in Sam's head again as he showed me scenes from the past few months, the murdered hikers in the woods. My stomach retched at the sight of their blank eyes and drained corpses, not an ounce of blood remaining in them. He changed the memory quickly before I could puke. And then I saw the others transforming for the first time. It's a blur as I watched Sam’s memories of each of their first transformations as they freak out before Sam explains to them the same way he’s explaining to me now.

"Does this happen to everyone?" I demanded.

"No. Only the descendants of the original wolves ..."

"Oh God. Billy ..."

"No. It hasn't happened since the days of Ephraim. Old Quil saw his grandfather transform. That's how he knew what had happened to me."

"But then, why? If it hasn't happened for a hundred years, why now? Why us?"

They all looked at me as if I were an idiot. And then, I realized that I already knew the answer to my own question.

"The Cullens," I snarled. My head erupted with the red hot rage. "It's because of them! They're the ones that did this. That's why Billy has always hated them. He knew this would happen when they moved back. Damnit. Why can't we ...."

Suddenly, I felt hands - or paws - holding me in place. I look up surprised to see Paul and Embry restraining me. I hadn't realized that I had jumped up and was crouching to attack.

"Jacob. The most important thing you need to know about being a werewolf is that our hallmark - our curse - is the inability to control our rage. You have to be aware of that at all times. Or else ..."

Sam's voice faded off deliberately, but I didn't notice as I suddenly remembered something else.

"Oh my god. Bella! The Cullens! She ..."

"She knows."

"What?" I jerked my head up in confusion. I glared as they all shifted uncomfortably, avoiding my eyes at all costs, except for Embry and Sam.

"She knows what they are," Sam repeated.

"That's not possible ..." My voice trailed off as I suddenly remembered that day at the beach. Oh sh*t. I was the one to tell her. Except I stupidly didn't know I was doing it.

"Well that explains it then," Sam mused. "We always wondered how she found out."

"Does this mean he broke the treaty?" Jared demanded anxiously.

I looked up at him horrified. The treaty. It wasn’t just a story. It was a real treaty. And I had broken it, even if I hadn't known what I was doing at the time.

"But ... but ... she didn't believe me. She thought they were scary stories. She can't have known ..." I protested even though in my heart I knew that I was protesting in vain.

"She did know. She told Billy as much when he confronted her last spring."

My head spun as Sam flashed back to the memory of a phone call with Billy last spring. But I didn’t have to watch, because I was there, fuming in my room, when I accidentally overheard the entire conversation. It hadn't made sense to me at the time. But now, re-watching the scene was painful – every moment a mockery of my naiveté and ignorance.

" ... I don't know how the hell she dated a Vampire though. Can you imagine her kissing one of those bloodsuckers?"

I stared at Paul, horrified at this new train of thought that I hadn’t considered. Images of Bella in the arms of a monster started to flash through my head. My Bella. My best friend. The girl I was in love with. With him. A bloodsucking vampire. And then I remembered that she was still grieving over him, unable – no unwilling – to let go.

"...him kissing her, touching her ..."

I launched myself at Paul before I realized what I was doing. Sam and Embry grabbed me by the neck and held me in place as I struggled to keep the burning rage in check. My breathing was ragged as my stomach churned at the thought.

"Behave Paul," Sam commanded, in a deep resonant timbre that sounded nothing like his voice.

Paul obeyed grumpily, cutting off the rest of his thoughts abruptly. I shut my eyes and forced those images out of my head. I couldn’t bear to think about them right now. I knew if I did, I would completely lose it. I opened my eyes wearily and looked around.

"There are others. They're not like the Cullens. They've been hunting," Sam explained grimly.

I remembered suddenly the flashbacks that Sam showed me of the murdered hikers. The others started to fill me in and I was suddenly overwhelmed with images ... the wolves running through the woods ... coming across a series of murdered hikers ... fleeting glimpses of a tall black-haired vampire with dreads and a female vampire with bright orange curly locks ... the wolves with their noses close the ground sniffing at a burning sickly sweet smell ... the wolves running in the shadows to avoid being seen by hikers ... chasing a trail through the woods but getting nowhere ...

"But can we destroy them? I mean, do we know how?" I asked.

"We haven't actually caught up with them yet so we don't know for sure," Sam admitted. "All we really know is what the legends tell us."

"So ..." I paused, grimacing as I realized that the grotesque descriptions from the scary stories that haunted me as a child would have to become reality.

"Rip and burn, baby. Rip and burn," Paul laughed with a barking yelp.

"It's not that easy," Jared scoffed. He turned to explain, "Old Quil said that their venom is poisonous. That was one of the few things that his grandfather told him. So we have to be careful when we attack."

"Right" I agreed, stupidly, sounding as if I knew what I was talking about. "So how do we find them?" I was raring to go. More than anything, I wanted to have an outlet for the million and one emotions boiling over inside of me.

"We've been trying, but there's a lot of territory to cover. Now that the Cullens are gone, we've been trying to cover beyond the treaty land - towards Forks," Sam explained. "We basically split up running patrols, in search of their scent so that we can track them down. Hopefully before they kill again."

"But they're damned fast ..." Paul grumbled.

Embry jumped in, "We never seem to be able to catch them in the act. We always arrive a few minutes too late."

I winced at his euphemism. The thought of seeing a vampire in the act of draining human blood was making me light-headed with anger. When the faceless victim I was picturing in my head turned into Bella, then my head really began to feel like it would explode.

Gritting my teeth to keep myself in check, I asked, "So how long are we ... you know, like this ..." Suddenly, an even more terrible thought popped into my head. "This isn't permanent is it?”

"No!" Sam reassured me. "The legends say that it'll take about 10 to 15 years before we regain enough control to stop shifting."

"Ten to fifteen years!"

My heads flooded with images - of high school graduation, college, a job, a family - things that I had taken for granted would be in my future. I had never thought much about them before, but now, the painful realization that they weren't for me made me realize how much I had taken them for granted.

"You have to still go to school in the meantime ..."

"... we have to keep up appearances, keep the secret..." Embry interrupted

" ... but forget about studying or your grades for now. The most important thing is not to kill anyone," Jared finished Embry’s thought.

I looked at him in alarm. “What do you mean kill someone?“

"It's really dangerous for you to be around normal human beings right now, you could lose control at any time and hurt those around you," Sam explained. Then with a nod to the others, he continued, "You have to hang out with your brothers.You need to stay close to each other, because they are the only ones strong enough to restrain if you lose control."

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end as I processed what he said. I imagined myself losing control in class, pouncing on my classmates or in my garage with Bella…

"You can't see her."

"What?!" I cried out, looking around at the others, who had just watched and listened to my train of thoughts with me.

"Haven't you heard anything we've been saying?" Sam demanded

"But it's Bella. I won't hurt her ... she won't make me angry ..." I protested.

Paul cackled. "Kiddo, you clearly have never been in love before. Women drive you crazy, man!"

"But I would never hurt her! I can do this!" I insisted, my heart pounding loudly as I contemplated a life without her.

"Enough!"

Sam closed his eyes and turned away from me. The silence among the group was deafening and I saw them all looking away uncomfortably. Then Sam turned back to me and I jumped back in shock at the haunted look on his face.

"I'm not trying to be unreasonable, Jacob. But you really are a danger to her. Believe me, you don't want to want to make that mistake.”

Abruptly, I was in the middle of another one of Sam's memories. He and Emily were in her backyard – there was snow on the ground so it must have been this past winter - and they were fighting. I couldn’t quite make out what they were arguing about, but I could see Sam getting more and more agitated. He grabbed Emily's shoulders with both arms and shook her, begging her to listen to him. Emily said something cutting in response - which surprised me given how sweet she normally was - and then suddenly, I knew what I was about to see.

I recognized the uncontrollable expression on Sam's face and I shut my eyes quickly, but it was useless. I forgot that I was seeing this in my mind - through Sam's memories - and so I couldn’t shut it off. I saw him transform involuntarily, with his arms still around her. His left hand - now a gigantic clawed paw - tore down the right side of her face as it jerked up uncontrollably during the transformation. Emily screamed, crumpling to the ground, unconscious from the pain. There was blood everywhere, pouring from the three jagged tears running down the entire right side of her body.

Sam was crazed with horror and self-hatred, but he didn’t dare go near her. He couldn’t calm himself down enough to phase back, so he unleashed a plaintive - almost unhinged sounding - howl. Seconds later, Jared and Paul - as wolves - burst into the yard. They processed the scene and Jared immediately phased to carry the unconscious Emily into the house while Paul dashed back into the forest.

Moments later, the Clearwater's car swung into the driveway with Paul at the wheel and Sue in the front seat, carrying her nurse's bag. They entered the house as Sam frantically paced outside - just in the shadows of the trees - afraid of being seen yet desperately wanting to see.

Because it was his memory that I was seeing, I could feel every ounce of the anguish, pain, and blistering self-hatred that trapped him in his wolf form. I watched, sick to my bones, as the ambulance arrived, paramedics shouting at each other about the "bear" attack, and Emily being carted off on a stretcher.

I watched as Sam - still unable to phase - slinks into the woods and curls up under a tree. Morning comes, but he is still unable to phase back as he torments himself by replaying what happened over and over again in his head. Finally, it is nightfall again and Jared has come to find him. He tells Sam that Emily will recover, and finally, Sam is able to relax. He forces himself to calm down, clamping down on the red virulent rage of self-hatred, forcing it to ebb away temporarily, and then suddenly, he is human again. The memory stopped abruptly but I didn't look up.

"You can't see her. I can't let you risk that," Sam choked out.

I nodded my head. I didn’t argue with him because I knew that he was right. And I was right. I am a monster.

I heard the others' chiming in on what I just thought - ranging from protesting (Jared) to mocking (Paul) to soothing (Embry) to resignation (Sam). Suddenly, I was desperate to get away from the hum of voices in my head, to get away from having my every thought open to the whole world.

That was when I remembered what I had seen in the memory - what Sam had done in order to phase back. I grimaced as I forced myself to breathe slower and to force the red haze to wane. It wasn’t as hard as I had expected, mostly because I had already spent most of my anger and I was too shell-shocked to react any more. Suddenly, as I felt the red haze slowly fade away, I shimmered back into my human form.

The change back was disorienting. I was completely naked and every part of my body hurt like hell from the transformation. The hot prickling that I felt before was nothing compared to the searing heat that burned my skin now. I heard a faint shimmering sound around me as the rest of them phased back too.

"How did you do that Jake?" Embry sputtered in shock, as he and the others pulled on the clothes that they had brought with them, tied to that black string on their ankles. I laughed then. A bitter and mirthless laugh. So much for that black anklet being some stupid gang symbol.

Sam's low urgent tones interrupted my thoughts. "Jake, how did you do that?"

I looked back at them confused. "I saw what Sam did in the memory. I just calmed down and it happened."

They looked at each other and then back at me with shock and confusion written over all their faces.

"Was that wrong?" I asked, suddenly worried that I had broken some unspoken werewolf code.

"No, no! It just took me days to figure out how to do that," Embry shared.

"It took me a week," Jared added. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. "It took Paul weeks."

The irony. I had always wanted to be extraordinary at something in my life. And to find out that my latent talent was being good at being a werewolf was suddenly too much for me to bear. With my eyes stinging, I turned away and started stumbling into the darkness of the trees.

I heard someone - probably Embry - make a move to follow me, but Sam held him back and told him to let me go. I used my hands to feel my way through the forest, my human eyes unable to see as well in the dark as my wolf eyes could.

I wandered for what felt like hours in the forest - not caring where I was going - just lost in my head as I replayed the evening’s events over and over. I didn’t seem possible that just a few hours ago, I had been happier than I could ever have imagined possible with Bella. And now, this.

I finally reached the ocean. I was on the beach, right by the white driftwood log where I had chatted with Bella that fateful day. That’s when I curled up in the darkness and started to cry.

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